If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

The Gyms have been ok, I avoided looking at the rosters so I could be surprised, kind of lame how they used the 3 Pokemon format again, my only complaints so far are Valerie and Olympia, for the later Gym Leaders they seem kind of under powered, haven't faced Wulfric yet but I'm sure Sylveon and Doublade can handle Ice types fine

Seriously though, I'm glad Malva actually has some relevance. Also, I guess I can give my impressions on the leaders now that I've beaten the game.

Viola - Very two dimensional. She does photography, that it. She's also really easy with a Quilladin Rollout sweep.Grant - He's also very two dimensional, but at least his gym has that cool waterfall.Korrina - SUCH. A. G.ODDESS. Seriously, I really like Korrina and her flamboyant personality. It feels like they actually tried with her!Ramos - Ah the stereotypicla old man. How fun. But it IS nice that we break the mold of young, female grass gym leaders. Should've been named Herb)Clemont - As much as I like the kid himself, the gym is quite boring. That said, I love all electric gym leaders, and this guy is no exception.Valerie - Her gym is easily one of my favorites of all time, the dollhouse motif, and the trainers in there are so cute. She too, is very cute.Olympia - Stoic, mystical, bland, boring, sucks. Next!Wulfric - He's pretty cool, so is his gym, and that puzzle had me going "What the actual f***" during my math class. Feels good man.

Wikstrom - A knight, quite classy, he's very noble and I like him, if only because he's what I expected a steel elite four to look like.Malva - ANOTHER G.ODDESS. AND SHE's EVIL TOO! GOD, I SWEAR SHE MIGHT JUST BE MY FAVORITE ELITE FOUR MEMBER EVER.... excuse me, that was uncalled for. She rocks.Drasna - She's so happy! I can't, not like her! Also, she has a Dragalge, so she's already leading the pack in cool typings.Siebold - Meh

Champ - Predictable, but her music is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.

Them's be my thoughts on the whole leaders and elites. Take it with a grain a of salt. Except Malva. That part is all fact.

A high level Florges can solo everyone in the E4 except Wikstrom, and a Greninja can play clean up... I think that the levels for all the gyms were pretty underwhelming as well as the amount of pokemon. I would've preferred something along the lines of high 60s or low 70s for the E4 and mid-high 70s for Diantha. It sucks that they don't get a boost either for the rematches.

Viola- As 725roy said, there's not a lot to her, character wise (Like many of the Gym Leaders this time around). However, she had a pretty interesting team considering she's the first Gym Leader. I expected to absolutely destroy her with Fennekin, but Surskit actually put up a fight. Vivillon went down with no trouble though.
Not a bad Gym Leader, not anything too special either, like most region's first Gym Leaders.

Grant- Grant's not really very developed either, and his character design is weird (He has the handholds from a climbing wall in his hair? What's up with that?). He does score extra points with me, though, for being a Rock-Type Gym Leader who isn't the first in the region, and also for royally destroying my team the first time I fought him, and I only just scraped through on my second attempt. Sadly, he's probably the most difficult Gym Leader in the region if you ask me, which is a real shame.
The reason for this is the fact that he uses a Level 25 Amaura and a Level 25 Tyrunt, which are Rock/Ice-Type and Rock/Dragon-Type respectively, which are amazing Types for this point in the game. Notably, this makes him the only Gym Leader to use only Kalos Pokemon.
The real kicker for me is that Amaura has Thunder Wave, which came completely out of left field. You don't really think to buy Paralyse heals before a Rock-Type Gym, but it's definitely worth the time for this battle.
For giving me the most trouble out of any one of the Kalos Gym Leaders, Grant is probably one of my favourites, rivalled only by Wulfric and pretty much the entire Elite 4.

Korrina- Korrina's probably the most developed character out of all the Gym Leaders, and I have to give the game designers credit for giving us a Fighting-Type Gym Leader who isn't a martial artist. However, she's a bit of a pushover.
It's clearly shown that she has 2 Lucario with her, which would've been nice to see in the Gym battle, but instead she opts for a Mienshao, a Machoke and a Hawlucha. Given her connections to Mega Evolution, I was really surprised to not see a Mega Lucario in the fight. Turns out it's reserved for an incredibly short and underwhelming 1v1 fight later on, where she's revealed to be the Mega Evolution guru's succesor and gives you a Lucario holding the Lucarionite to battle her own. The battle has no bearing on the story, you can't use your own Pokemon in the battle, and it's pretty much pointless. You do get to keep the Lucario and the Lucarionite afterwards though, which was nice.

Ramos- It felt really weird to get to a sunny seaside town and find out that the Gym Leader uses Grass-Types. I can't really complain. I'm just glad it wasn't a Water-Type Gym. I might've murdered the entire design team.
Ramos, again, is not very developed. You never meet him before the Gym battle, and you never meet him again afterwards. He just exists to get his butt kicked.
He's weak as hell.
I wrecked him.
Seriously, he's one of the weakest Gym leaders in the series, especially considering he's the 4th Leader in the region. It's probably because he uses such monstrously powerful Pokemon as Jumpluff and Weepinbell. Seriously. Kalos has Pokemon like Pansage, Trevenant, Ferroseed, Gourgeist and Foongus available, and his Pokemon could easily have been 2-3 levels highers without being too challenging to beat, so why is he so incredibly weak?
Oh well, at least it's not a Water-Type Gym, or worse...

Clemont- ... An Electric-Type Gym.
Of all the types that absolutely did not need to be represented by a Gym this generation, Electric and, as mentioned, Water, were the main two. Water was dropped from the roster for the first time since Generation 2, which was great, but sadly, we now have this, ANOTHER Electric-Type Gym, and it's staler than ever.
Basically, it's a weird nerdy toddler in a silly jumpsuit with a grabby hand and a Heliolisk-like satellite dish coming from his backpack. For absolutely no reason.
What's worse is that Clemont is, as I said, an absolute joke. He's on par with Ramos when it comes to being ridiculously easy. Even worse than that is that 2/3 of his team are used by past Electric-Type Gym Leaders. They had 6 entire generations worth of Pokemon to choose from, and they ended up re-using the same ones? Why doesn't he have Ampharos? Because on of the Gym trainers does?
The Gym Trainers use more original Pokemon than the leader? Really? It's just ridiculous.
Basically, he's the worst Gym Leader. Not just the worst in X & Y, but the worst in the series.

Valerie- Now things are starting to pick up again.
It was good to see the debut of a Fairy-Type Gym come along with the Type's introduction, and it's a very solid start. Valerie has a cool design and a solid team which could potentially give players some trouble, if only because they may not be totally sure about the Fairy-Types weaknesses and resistances yet, and 2 of her Pokemon have very good dual Typings to go with Fairy.
Apart from that, there's not a lot to say. She's not very developed at all, but atleast she's not a complete pushover, and this isn't the 4th Fairy-Type Gym in a row.

Olympia- Yet another Gym Leader who's not very developed and simply exists to give you a badge. She does have an interesting character design, however, and her team isn't bad either. It was also nice to see a Psychic Gym for the first time in a while.
Once again, not a lot to be said. Olympia's a forgettable character, but hey, she was interesting for the 2 minutes it took me to beat her.

Wulfric- Wulfric breaks the mold in many ways. For one thing, he uses Ice-Types, but he isn't the 7th Gym Leader. For another, his Gym doesn't consist of an ice skating puzzle. In fact, it's the most challenging puzzle in the entire region, and it's actually pretty awesome. You can bet I wasn't expecting that.
Wulfric is, essentially, a Viking. You can tell from his name. And his facial hair.
Unfortunately, he basically tells you before the battle that you're going to wreck him. With Delphox, I took out Abomasnow and Avalugg (I still can't figure out what that thing's meant to be) without a hitch, but Cryogonal actually gave me some trouble, simply due to its incredible Special Defence. Still really easy, though.
Overall, his character design is cool (HA!), and it was nice that you actually see him outside of the Gym a little bit, but apart from that, nothing too special. I do like him a lot though.

Elite Four

Wikstrom- Something I'd like to get out of the way immediately is that I really like this Elite Four line-up. Strangely, it feels like more effort was put into the Elite Four's personality than the Gym Leaders, which is really weird.
Anyway, I knew as soon as I walked into the Ironworks Chamber that Wikstrom was going to kick ***, and I was right. As soon as I saw those enormous blades, I knew what was coming.
He uses Aegislash, one of the best Pokemon of Generation VI by far. The highlight of this match was that I ended up using my own Aegislash to fight his, so it was essentially as close as Pokemon's going to get to a sword dual, and God damn if it wasn't awesome.
His character design is cool too. He wears a suit of armour. For a Pokemon battle. It's pretty damn cool.

Malva- I didn't know it at first, but I'd already seen Malva earlier on in the game. It turns out that this is the woman you see on the Holocaster after Team Flare's raid on the Pokeball Factory, which surprised me a lot. I don't think I recognised her, seeing as she was entirely blue the first time I saw her.
In battle, she uses Fire-Type Pokemon, including a Chandelure, which is one of my favourite Pokemon, so she gets extra points for that. She's wasn't very difficult to beat (I ended up sweeping her with Aurorus, which somehow outsped her Talonflame. I don't even know), but she's definitely an interesting character.

Drasna- When I found out there was a Dragon-Type user in the Elite 4, Drasna was not what I expected at all. A calm, smiling middle aged lady? With powerful Dragon-Types? That's pretty cool.
Unfortunately, she's not very strong at all. Her team consists of Dragalge, Altaria, Druddigon and Noivern, which are all cool, but not very powerful. I was expecting something like Garchomp, especially seeing as how easy it is to find Gible in Kalos. No such luck though, so she was by far the easiest of the Elite 4 to beat. Still pretty neat though.

Siebold- Yeah, there was no way they'd drop a Water-Type user from the game completely. Luckily, Siebold is absolutely awesome (Probably my favourite character in the game, design wise). He didn't give me much trouble until he brought out his Barbaracle, which managed to survive a x4 Super Effective Petal Blizzard from my Florges, but it didn't really do a whole lot while it was still in play. So yeah, pretty easy.

So there you have it, my opinions on all the individual Gym Leaders and Elite Four.
Overall, the Gym Leaders were disappointing. I feel like they don't really have any personality compared to Generation 4 and Generation 5, and the lack of new Pokemon introduced this generation made feel like there was an unfortunate reliance on Pokemon introduced in past Generations, with each Gym Leader only having one Kalos Pokemon each, except for Grant. The difficulty was very underwhelming as well, mainly due to the new EXP Share mechanics, Horde Battles, and just the species and levels of the Gym Leader's Pokemon.
The Gym Types were also very strange choices. Electric, Ice and Bug are all Types which have been represented a lot recently (Bug not so much, but Ice, and especially Electric, just too much) whereas other Types have been skipped over for several Generations.
I feel that the Gym line-up should have looked more like this (In no particular order)...

-Fighting
-Ghost
-Dark
-Psychic
-Fire
-Grass
-Fairy
-Rock

All of these are Types which haven't been represented since at least Generation 4, and would've been perfect to put in the game this time around. Unfortunately, it seems the game designers really like the Electric-Type.
My final complaint lies in the fact that, up until the games were released, I'd assumed that each Gym Leader would have a signature Pokemon that would Mega Evolve, or at least past a certain point (Most likely starting at the Shalour Gym). Several Gym Leaders use Pokemon that can Mega Evolve, and nearly all of them that don't use a Type which includes a Pokemon that can Mega Evolve (Lucario for Korrina, Ampharos for Clemont, Mawile for Valerie, Alakazam for Olympia and Abomasnow for Wulfric. The only Type that doesn't really get a Mega Evolution is Grass-Type, and I don't really see Ramos using a Mega Venusaur). Considering how much emphasis is put on Mega Evolution throughout the story, you only really battle two Mega Evolved Pokemon properly in the whole game. It was definitely a little bit disappointing.

Anyway, no matter whether the Gyms were good or bad, I still had a great time playing X.

1) If your name isn't Korrina, don't expect to have much of a story going on with you.

2) "Welcome, soon-to-be Champ! This is the first Fairy-type Gym!"

"So yeah, what happened to the Dark-Type Gym?"

"Nonsense, boy! But here! You fought this sassy Electric-Type Gym before this one!"

3) Speaking of Korrina, her overall rollerskater theme just doesn't mash well with the fact she's into Mega Evolutions. All the Gym Leaders besides her fit their themes just nicely, but being a rollerskater as a Fighting-type Gym sounds so off. (You can tell with the abundance of Karate Girls and Black Belts running around.) Oh, but I guess it was a little understandable of her to use a Kalos Pokémon instead of one of her Lucario as it wouldn't look good against the other Gym Leaders. Though it was underwhelming that Riolu are nonexistent in the game just because she gives you the only means to reach that line through its evolution first...

4) I at least wished for the other Gym Leaders to have more of a personality and story. Just look at Valerie's eyes! How did she get those? And Olympia, who looks far more imposing than Sabrina.

Do you mean nonexistent or impractical? Because Riolu is found on Route 22.

And wow, am I the only one who isn't totally disappointed by the Leaders? I mean, I can understand that disappointmen, but I don't like to see things so negatively.

If Route 22 is the route next to Santalune City, then that means I literally skipped that route in the entire game until I came out from the other side of the Victory Road entrance... I guess I'm spending an afternoon in Pokémon-amie now!

There are so many reasons why these Gym Leaders don't compare to the previous gens if we go by story development to get to know them. The Kanto Gym Leaders have four times as more story than these guys, even more so that Korrina. And it's pretty underwhelming none of the League honchos didn't raise a finger against Team Flare after announcing their butt-scary plans for the region. Malva doesn't get punished for it!

After experiencing a very strong story in BW, you can't help but compare.

If Route 22 is the route next to Santalune City, then that means I literally skipped that route in the entire game until I came out from the other side of the Victory Road entrance... I guess I'm spending an afternoon in Pokémon-amie now!

There are so many reasons why these Gym Leaders don't compare to the previous gens if we go by story development to get to know them. The Kanto Gym Leaders have four times as more story than these guys, even more so that Korrina. And it's pretty underwhelming none of the League honchos didn't raise a finger against Team Flare after announcing their butt-scary plans for the region. Malva doesn't get punished for it!

After experiencing a very strong story in BW, you can't help but compare.

Yeah, Route 22 is the very one. I actually would have totally missed it as well if I wasn't playing with some friends at the time.

And in case you took it that way, I don't want to single you out. It's just that many comments say only negative things about them, even though they have good points as well. I know it's natural that there'd be a lot of comparing to BW, but especially with so much else that they did with this game, I'm not exactly surprised the leaders turned out the way they did. From a design perspective, at least, I think they did well. And the leaders at least use Pokemon that stray from the gym trainers as well, making the leader's team more of surprise. Even the trainers themselves avoid using too much of the same Pokemon as each other.

I think the Leaders with the lead Pokémon in their team that fits them perfectly are- Viola, Ramos, Clemont, Valerie and Wulfric. Grant could have had Tyrunt as his lead and not both him and Amaura, Korrina should have had Pangoro, Olympia SHOULD have had Malamar not Meowstick! The E4 have Pokémon that Represent them Perfectly!

I kinda agree on the Olympia part.She should've had a Malamar AND a Meowstic.

"Fear is Freedom!
Subjugation is Liberation!
Contradiction is Truth!
These are the truths of the world! Surrender to these truths, you pigs in human clothing!"

I heard that you have to battle Korrina three times throughout the games. Is that true? Because it sounds like a hassle. And as for the rematches with the Gym Leaders; they sound really underwhelming, but I guess battling them at the Battle Chateau is better than nothing.

I heard that you have to battle Korrina three times throughout the games. Is that true? Because it sounds like a hassle. And as for the rematches with the Gym Leaders; they sound really underwhelming, but I guess battling them at the Battle Chateau is better than nothing.

I'd like to just pop in to say that I really like how they did Wulfric, where he's proud of the fact that he's an Ice-type specialist, but he's not all in your face is "ICE IS BEST OMG UR ALL GONNA DIE 2 ICE." He admits outright that YMMV in the Gym match depending on your team composition, but sticks to his guns and talks about the type on a more personal level.

Way better than Valerie and Olympia, anyway. And Ramos, those three were all pretty forgettable.

The gyms were way too easy. Is it that hard to give gyms 4-5 pokemon anymore? I pretty much OHKOd every gym leader pokemon from Korrina to ulfric sans sturdy magneton.

As much as I would have liked that as well, would an extra Pokemon or two necessarily make them tougher if you can already OHKO the rest of their teams? I think the fact that EXP Share is so broken may have been part of this, because Korrina was a joke when I fought her as well. I used the EXP Share sparingly after that, and the gyms afterwards weren't so simple.